D E M U R E
by mistergobet
Summary: AU, high-school fic. Toshiro is given the chance, while in a near-death state, to "rewrite" his high school love story. Between the familiar tomboy Karin and new discovery, clever and demure Momo, Toshiro just doesn't have enough of himself to give. —HitsuHina, mild HitsuKarin
1. Keepsake

DEMURE  
**Chapter One  
**_Keepsake_

* * *

The first time Toshiro laughed – really, _truly _laughed to laugh, and not just to scorn someone who was just too unbelievably moronic – was because of her.

Not just because of her. _With _her. _For _her.

And all the other laughs after that –

– were they all from her, as well?

Smiles, too. Here and there, there were smiles, but the laughs were more important. The laughs were louder, so much louder, like smiles that couldn't be contained. That unimaginable, otherworldly, contagious euphoria of hers, he remembered. He remembered it so well.

But _her_, he couldn't. Where did this happiness come from, again?

Who's _her_?

* * *

There was something black. A figure, a silhouette, dark and big and shadowy, its face – if it possessed one at all – not even visible. Toshiro looked left, right, up and down – he was immersed in utter blackness, an abyss of nothingness without even ground, making his ability to stand upright quite questionable.

"Where am I?" he said aloud, and although he didn't expect the figure to respond, it did anyway.

However, he couldn't be sure if the response came from the figure or from another invisible, possibly disembodied voice. The figure certainly hadn't moved, and neither had its nonexistent mouth.

"In a coma. You're unconscious, and you're about to wake up with selective amnesia."

"A coma–?"

"—tell me, what is your name?"

Toshiro clicked his tongue disdainfully, feeling like his time was being wasted. "Hitsugaya Toshiro. Male, eighteen years old, citizen of Japan. Would you like more?"

The atmosphere shifted then, as though the figure were smiling. "Please."

Blinking, Toshiro bit his cheek and began digging up the facts he knew of himself: "Graduate of Seireitei High. Enrolled in Soul U with a General Science major. In tenth grade, I was named Rookie of the Year on my soccer team. In eleventh grade, I was Captain and MVP, and top in Math. In senior year, I was named valedictorian and received a Calculus award."

"Anything else particularly _interesting _in high school?" came the question, its tone a little _too _vague and knowing.

Somewhat annoyed, Toshiro shook his head. "What do you mean by that?"

"Tell me about your social life. What about your friends? Your girlfriends? Did any of your teachers give you trouble in particular?"  
"What?" Toshiro took a step back. "Uh, no. And I never had a girlfriend. I was friends with an upperclassman named Kurosaki Ichigo, who was also on my soccer team, and his younger sister, Karin. I was on good terms with our team manager, Matsumoto Rangiku."

A snicker sounded, resonating off walls that weren't there. "Close, but no cigar, Hitsugaya-san."

"Tell me what you mean!" Toshiro demanded, running forward, but by the time he reached the figure, it had dissolved into the darkness. "Come back! What am I missing? And what are you?"

"You really want to know?" A pause. "I'm a Death god. I'm here because I certainly don't think you want to die, but I doubt you want to wake up right now forgetting some of the most important moments of your life. I'm here to give you another shot, Hitsugaya-san."

"Tell me what happened," begged Toshiro. "How did I get amnesia? And what have I forgotten? I really don't feel any different…"

"You got amnesia from a car accident. You weren't paying attention because you'd just separated with your girlfriend of three years."

"Whoa, wait – three years? That means I'd been dating her all throughout high school? Who is she?"  
A silence ensued, in which the shinigami seemed to be digesting Toshiro's reply with distaste. "How sad, Hitsugaya-san. You really don't remember? Oh, and how she loved you, too…"

"Stop messing around with me!" Toshiro shouted. "I don't understand. Even if I had a girlfriend, I wouldn't let a stupid _break-up _fight nearly _kill _me—"

"—I think what really killed you was the _regrets_."

"Regrets?"

"There was a lot that happened between you two. Maybe the end wouldn't be so bitter if the both of you hadn't been so careful and awkward. Or maybe you just chose the wrong person."

"Please," Toshiro tried again, sinking down to his knees and almost ready to bow down, "please tell me who it was."

"Will it really change anything, Hitsugaya-san?" A chuckle. A smidge of sympathy, the kind that really stung to receive.

Toshiro swallowed, his voice coming out hoarse: "It'd change the fact that waking up without having asked you would just add to my regrets."

The shinigami laughs, a raucous and appreciative laugh that fills the abyss and rings painfully in Toshiro's ears. "Please, please, this is too good."

Toshiro waited.

"You're never going to forgive me now for dropping the bomb, Hitsugaya-san, but the very girl you mentioned – the younger sister of your upperclassman friend – is the one you dated. Frankly I'm not too sure how much you cared for her – after all, no one knows what you feel but yourself – but she did seem very smitten with you."

"Karin?" Toshiro mouthed, but nothing came out. He coughed, two times, three times, and then, "Impossible. No, no really. Karin?"

"The one and only." The shinigami gave a gleeful sort of whoop. "I can tell you're astonished. Were you expecting someone else?"

"There's no one else," Toshiro insisted, "and if there were, I doubt I'd remember."

"A shame." The shinigami smacked his lips on the last syllable.

"Do you really think she was the wrong choice?" Toshiro stopped suddenly, frowning. "Wait – you mentioned someone else?"

"Ha, ha! I'm not going to answer that. That'd just make it too easy. But here's a question for you, my good sir: would you rather have a second go at making all the decisions you've regretted, or would you rather have the chance to make an entirely different story for yourself?"

"If the original story ended in regret, there's always a chance it will again, right?"

The shinigami clapped, slowly, five times. "Well, well … I underestimated you. I told you earlier I was planning to give you another shot at your high school years up until this moment, but I'll go even one step further. I'll let you write down any one thing – the one _keepsake_ you want to hold on to once I send you back – because once you're there, you'll be sixteen again, in mind, body, and soul. You won't remember a word of this conversation, and not a fraction of the future."

"Then how am I supposed to avoid regrets?" Toshiro scowled, the gears of his brain still working to piece together the shinigami's logic.

"The keepsake is all I'm giving you," the shinigami grinned. "It's your chance to rewrite your story. Take it or leave it, but if you ask me, it's your last hope, and a darn good one, too. Choose your words carefully, because they're all sixteen-year-old Hitsugaya-chan will have to live by."

Toshiro took a deep breath. He didn't even need to hesitate: he would take his best offer. "Alright then. How do I do this? Do you have a piece of paper?"

"I-di-ot," laughed the shinigami. "This is all in your head; do you really believe a piece of paper can be extracted from the depths of your consciousness and suddenly brought to life in reality? Just write it with your fingers – on your forearm, or the palm of your hand, or the back of your hand – depends on how much space you need for it, really. One sentence only. If you try to cram a list into one sentence, only the first will be paid heed. Understood?"

Toshiro nodded mutely. Anxiously, he curled his index finger and began contemplating his best option.

The second his finger dotted the exclamation mark at the end of his sentence, the abyss swallowed him whole, and his senses cut out entirely.

* * *

Toshiro awoke with a searing pain in the palm of his hand. Blinking rapidly, he found that he was not the least bit tired, and chalked it up to a fantastic night's rest.

Lifting his hand up to his eyes, he squinted at the little black words, seemingly made in permanent marker, on his skin.

**Choose a girl you won't regret.**

He scoffed. Who had written this on his hand? Probably one of his teammates, when he hadn't been looking, at practice the other day. Sometimes Toshiro began dozing after particularly harsh training sessions.

However, scrubbing with soap wouldn't budge the ink, and neither would running it under water and clawing at it with his nails for thirty minutes straight. By the time he realized it wouldn't come off, he was nearly late for school. Not wanting anyone else to see, he cleverly placed a fat Band-Aid over his palm and took off.

He had just stepped into the school building when his eyes met those of Kurosaki Karin's. She was a girl nearly equal in height to Toshiro, with a lean frame and athletic promise. Her hair was as vibrantly black as her brother's was vibrantly orange, sleek and parted in the middle, cropped bluntly at the chin – a tomboy at heart and at surface.

She waved to him and beckoned him over, and though he made to obey, he thought of the words on his hands, and of how Rangiku had mentioned just yesterday before soccer practice that Karin was probably going to corner him into a relationship sometime soon.

And honestly, Toshiro wanted a bit more time to consider that than he knew he would be given.

He returned the wave but instead turned to pass through the double doors leading into a passageway he never usually took to go to his locker.

His new story had begun.

* * *

**A/N - **Next chapter, enter Hinamori Momo. That's a promise.

Please leave a kind word if you enjoyed it, and any criticism or comments is welcome as well. (:

Have a great day.


	2. Choices

**DEMURE  
**Chapter Two  
_Choices_

* * *

Momo had never before endured a day as long as this.

To begin with, her Math test had returned a proven failure through-and-through, barely having scraped a pass with sixty-two points – a mark considered _adequate, _but only for _adequate _students, and Momo liked to be … well, more than just adequate.

She had always been a little handicapped at Math – numbers were not her strong point. For a girl who enjoyed drawing, and reading, she had no interest in arithmetic or algebra. And needless to say, there was simply no _creativity _involved in drawing graphs.

Furthermore, she had been placed in a project group at random for Chemistry class, since she had been away on sick leave the other day and missed the chance to select her own teammates. Therefore, Momo was left with names she didn't recognize, names she assumed probably belonged to the delinquents who didn't give enough damns about Chemistry to have showed up yesterday.

Just imagine: collaborating with delinquents! Momo's pout preceded her to her locker, where she stuffed her bag stock-full with books and papers. Because, on top of all the aforementioned turmoil, Momo was also facing the prospect of a walk home on soaking sidewalks.

The rain outside was steady, a romantic drizzle accompanied by moderate gusts that thankfully didn't seem to be much of a threat, though unfortunately was enough to make any outdoor walk miserable, and especially for certain girls who had chosen to wear dresses that day.

Grumbling to herself, Momo decided that she would stay in school until the rain let up, perhaps going to the library to finish some homework – though she had, virtually, none at all.

"—_wasting _my time, wasting my _paper_, think I have all the money in the world to throw away on brats like you, who don't have any respect for science and its ingenuity…?"

Momo was _just _barely quick enough to scamper out of sight before Kurotsuchi-sensei glided through the little shoe-locker mudroom. She watched his daunting, dark figure from behind as it made a beeline for the custodian's cart, and ruthlessly tossed a handful of papers into the bin.

Now, Momo had never been one of those cats to be killed by curiosity, but she too found it hard to resist temptations that came waltzing along right under her nose, and so she waited, dutifully silent, until her menacing Chemistry instructor had disappeared from view and ducked out from behind her cover of lockers. Darting to the trolley of window cleaners, garbage bags and an assortment of mops, Momo pinned her nose with two fingers and dove into the trash.

Rifling through junk was the least glamorous part of espionage. Swallowing the frets that she would have to go home smelling like rank coffee and rotten apples, Momo picked sheet off of sheet from the handful of papers, which had thankfully remained stuck together in a pile, but had suffered some stains, front and back and a little all over.

There were a couple copies of a transaction to buy textbooks (leaving Momo to wonder why he didn't _shred _them, at least, before disposal, for safety) followed by a student's assignment which had received a zero. At the bottom of the stack sat a pitiful-looking paper , nearly entirely drenched in the fluid it had unfortunately landed in (water).

She glanced at the failed assignment's owner: YAMADA HANATARO. The name sounded familiar. Weren't the other students in their Chemistry class always finding excuses to bully him?

Well, she doubted Yamada-kun would want this assignment back. Staring mournfully at the bold, red oval that marked his fate, she pursed her lips and returned it gently to the top of the trash pile. Such an accomplishment – and she considered it an accomplishment because she had never, ever been able to manage a _zero_ – would only give her classmates all the more reason to pick on poor Yamada-kun.

The other sheet, which Momo wasn't very fond of holding onto, was barely legible anymore. It appeared to be in Kurotsuchi-sensei's tidy, stiff printing, and Momo recognized the words as belonging to the notes she had taken with the rest of the class just yesterday. Glancing at the top of the paper, she saw the (marred and bleary) words—  
RETRIEVE BY THURSDAY  
ASM: NO EXT.

Momo bit back a gasp. Hasegawa Toshiro – or so his name almost appeared to be – hadn't retrieved his notes from Kurotsuchi-sensei. He was probably missing the day the class recorded these. Furthermore, there were no extensions for him on the related assignment, with which he likely wouldn't get what to do unless he had that tiny little set of instructions included at the end of the notes.

She didn't know what Hasegawa-kun looked like; he was absent from almost every class, and she thought she knew why.

Acquaintances of hers who had been in her class in her third year of Shino Middle School were, presently, members of the Seireitei High Soccer Club – Abarai Renji and Kira Izuru. The SHSC had been holding tryouts every single morning since the start of the week, and their meetings usually extended into the first few hours of the school day, as well. She had, for the most part, lost contact with the both of them; what little interactions they had shared in the first place had now been reduced to mute waves in passing. But Abarai-kun was _meant _to be in Kurotsuchi-sensei's Chemistry class too, though he'd made it clear since the beginning of the year that Chemistry was not one of his priorities, and Kurotsuchi-sensei hadn't seemed too bothered by it, since Abarai-kun made it a point not to get in the way by just not showing up at all.

It was safe to say that the instructor had, in some form or another, given up on Abarai-kun.

On the other hand, he must not have lost hope for this one individual, Momo figured as she looked at Hasegawa-kun's dripping notes, because he had obviously spent a great deal of time making this copy of notes.

Momo was a clever girl who prided herself on her excellent memory, and now, she was remembering the list of grades that Kurotsuchi-sensei posted on the classroom bulletin last Friday. She scrolled through it in her mind, vaguely recalling that as of yet, there were no zeros or _NHI_s (not-handed-in) for any student whatsoever. In fact, she believed that the only failing student thus far was Abarai-kun. Hasegawa-kun, she suspected, was probably a soccer club hopeful who unfortunately had no choice but to skip first period to try out.

She knew there had been a riot about this. Urahara Kisuke, served double duty as the club advisor and a regular Physics instructor. After school, he promptly left to manage a small business he owned downtown. He'd claimed to not have the time to coach a soccer club, but when the school board insisted due to too many soccer enthusiasts and no willing adults, he'd accepted with the condition that practices and matches would all have to take place before or during school.

Taking a deep breath, Momo glanced sideways at the mudroom door. The rain was still pouring like no tomorrow, and the wind had raised its voice. It wasn't just _whistling _anymore; it was shrieking.

Shuddering, Momo pulled her gray cardigan tighter around herself and headed to the library. Once there, she immediately strolled to the non-fiction section, which was essentially a ghost town right after school. Even the books themselves seemed destitute and in need of being moved from their rigid postures on the shelves. Dialing a number by heart, she pressed the phone to her ear and waited for the man she admired most to greet her—

"Hinamori-kun?"

"Aizen-sensei," Momo breathed happily, "I'm going to stay at school until the rain stops. I can pick up dinner on the way home. Please don't wait to eat."

The only father Momo had ever known went by the name of Aizen Sosuke. That easy smile, bespectacled pair of calm eyes, and those bear-like, capable hands had long since served as her shelter. He was a former staff member of Seireitei High, but it had been a good eight years since he'd resigned from his post and accepted a position at the local university to become a Psychology professor.

Having never felt _sure _enough of their relation to call him her _father, _Momo often referred to him as her guardian, and chose to address him as "sensei" because his given name, or even his surname without the honorific, seemed so informal to her that she believed it to be practically indecent.

"That's fine, Hinamori-kun. I'm off at six. Just call if you need me to come and get you."

Momo had already decided to commute by transit, but merely thanked him and bid goodbye.

She checked the window again, spirits sinking considerably when she saw that it was still pouring as hard as ever.

There really was nothing that she had to get done. Her agenda was empty save for a test that wasn't to come for four days more. Not in the mood to study, but deciding it'd be better to get a head-start, she opened up her folder of notes and began to leaf through it.

As she leafed, she pondered, and as she pondered, she wondered, and as she wondered, she found herself wondering about Hasegawa-kun and how he was able to stay on par with the rest of the class. Urahara-sensei, the SHSC's coach, refused to be held responsible for the club members' academic performance; however, poor grades would place the members' playing privileges in jeopardy. Perhaps he was a genius of some sort.

_If I wasn't mistaken, _she thought, _the notes Kurotsuchi-sensei had copied for Hasegawa-kun were for the chapter on compound properties._

Though Hasegawa-kun must have, up until now, been relying on sheer brilliance to keep up with the coursework, these such notes he would have had to be given in order to do well on this upcoming test.

On nothing but a mere whim, she removed a blank sheet of paper from her folder, cracked open her favourite pen, and began to make a copy of her own notes.

* * *

"Does anyone else notice it's starting to get pretty dark in the mornings?"

"That's because winter's coming, you moron."

"Idiot, winter isn't for another three months."

"It's the next season, is what I meant!"  
"Then next time, just say that!"

Friday morning, irritable and exhausted from lack of sleep, the Seireitei High Soccer Club sat on the grass under the dark-grey early sky, unlit by sunbeams as it had been at the beginning of September. Urahara-sensei was, again, late.

The members disbanded, some collapsing onto the dew-soaked grass to sneak in some sleep before their classes, others heading off to lounge in small groups with their friends. At one side of the field, Toshiro, Renji, Ichigo and Izuru sat in a circle that faced outward, each staring into the bleak morning at different directions.

"Oi," Renji said, yawning loudly, "how have you been doing in Chemistry?"

Toshiro tapped a soccer ball back and forth lazily with his hands. "Better than you."

"Oh, come on," said Renji. "Don't give me that bull. You've been missing all the classes this week for these first meetings."

"Toshiro's a genius," Ichigo snickered, though his voice was quiet and weary. "Didn't you know? He can pick up an assignment and work out how to do it in seconds."

"I believe that's what they call the _academic prodigy_," contributed Izuru.

Renji smirked, saying, "Not just academic. He's also the first freshman soccer captain, and probably the tiniest, too."

Toshiro's elbow seemed to twitch, but he managed to ignore Renji and remain silent.

"Big man, aren't you?" joked Renji, yawning once again. "Why do you try so hard? Is it 'cause you're short? Napoleon, you know, he was like that too. Guy did all this crazy stuff and my History teacher thinks it's all because he was insecure about having a little wang—"

"Hey, Toshiro," said Ichigo, fully aware of how much Toshiro hated being addressed so familiarly. "Karin was wondering what you think about her."

"She plays well. Almost as good as you," Toshiro said, with an edge in his voice that made it clear this was the _only _answer Ichigo was allowed to relay to his sister. He doubted she would be deterred by a comment like this; he'd seen enough of her and her brother's soccer spirit to say that theirs was a family which would not easily be disheartened by the littler details. "I didn't think she was the type to care about these things."

Ichigo chuckled. "What do you really know about her, though? You only met us this summer." Pulling up fistfuls of wet grass and letting them cascade onto his shoes, Ichigo heaved a sigh and added, "You're always so sharp with her. I bet she just wonders if you hate her or not."

"That's how I am," Toshiro shrugged. "If she doesn't like it, no one asked her to put up with me."

"Girls are weird," Ichigo agreed. "But you gotta be easier on them, dude."

Toshiro resigned himself, for the first time since he'd seen it on his hand yesterday morning, to once again think about that mysterious message.

_Won't regret … choose a girl … _

Toshiro thought back to Rangiku, who had suggested that Karin seemed to be close to crossing the exit border of "just friends" and even proposed that he "give it a go" with her. To which Toshiro had glared at her through eyes so candidly venomous, but she'd only laughed and left to help Urahara-sensei arrange the practice schedule for the soccer club.

_ "Give it a rest, Matsumoto. I've known her for, what, three weeks now? At most."_

_ "Who says you can't fall in love in three weeks? Some people fall at first sight, Captain!"_

_ "That's because they're dense and unobservant."_

He didn't know – or he didn't think he knew – whether Karin was right for him. He'd always figured that whatever chances at love he had which existed in this lifetime would come to find him on their own, and that'd he'd have to do nothing, and just go along with it, and it'd be easy and nice and right all in one.

But now some sort of divine intervention from unseen forces and unproven warnings from Rangiku were driving him into a corner, and actually asking him to _choose_, and it wasn't even about _which girl _but about _whether or not _this one girl. He'd never even considered that any decisions would have to made about it.

Heck, he never even cared about it all that much.

He would've gone on blissfully not caring if it hadn't been for these six non-washable words in his palm that suspiciously resembled his own handwriting, only slightly more crooked and inconsistent in letter sizes.

"Hitsugaya-buchou, are you not participating?" Urahara-sensei said, smiling down at him. Toshiro blinked out of his confusion and flicked his gaze upward, where it landed on the rusty glow of the sunrise behind his coach's looming figure.

"Coming," Toshiro grunted, shoving himself up from the ground and jogging over to where Renji and Ichigo were arranged in a practice scrimmage against Izuru and Ikkaku. "Abarai! Pick up your feet!"

Though he knew, with a growing discomfort, that the choices would just keep piling.

* * *

Karin found Toshiro with a towel around his neck and a bag of peanut amanatto in the cafeteria, scribbling on a piece of paper.

"Toshiro!" she called, dashing over to join him at his table. Hands on her hips, she leaned forward and asked, "Why didn't you say you ate alone? I'll eat with you."

"I don't care," Toshiro said bluntly. "I'm just in here to eat, anyway."

"You shouldn't neglect your friends," Karin clapped his shoulder and occupied the seat beside his.

Toshiro was tempted to remind her that they had only communicated enough times to warrant the relationship label _acquaintances_, and not yet _friends_, but resisted the urge to, succumbing to Ichigo's prior piece of advice about the fragility of females.

"Geez," Karin muttered, "you're such a handful. I don't know how anyone with less patience than me manages to be your friend."

"I don't have friends," argued Toshiro, only half-listening as he scrawled hurried answers into his worksheet. This Chemistry assignment had been due today; however, Toshiro prayed that if he could finish it before the last bell rang, Kurotsuchi-sensei might still accept it. The last thing he needed was a distraction, but he wasn't selfish enough to demand Karin to leave.

"You do," insisted Karin, her mouth twitching into a smile. "I'm your friend. I'll always be your friend."

Toshiro bit his tongue then, resisting the urge to ask if she'd be willing to be _just _his friend, for a little while longer. "Yeah," he said, just, "okay."

A pause settled in between them, and not the tolerable sort that he usually experienced in her company, but the awkward sort. And this was new to him. Suddenly he found he couldn't concentrate all too well on his work.

Yet, asking her to leave him alone remained out of the question.

Karin reached into her bag and pulled out two Tupperware containers. In one, there was a salad. In the other, sliced watermelon. She opened them both enthusiastically, dragging the salad toward herself and pushing the watermelon between the two of them.

"Let's share this," she chirped. "You can't live on amanatto alone."

Toshiro was always ready to argue that amanatto was so important that is was practically equivalent to a life force, but he accepted the watermelon with a hungry eagerness. His grandmother made the best watermelon, but Karin's would suffice for now.

Although Toshiro had only just met her mid-August – less than a whole month ago – she had already picked up on his favorite foods. She frequently complained that she wanted to get to know him in greater depth, but hell if he didn't know what _that _was supposed to mean now.

"This is nice, isn't it?" Karin chuckled, enjoying the watermelon with gusto.

With the mysteries currently clouding his previously nonexistent romantic matters, the atmosphere with Karin had changed substantially in perspective and probably wouldn't ever revert back to the way things were before Rangiku had stuck her big nose into all of this, but she and her brother were still people he was glad to have around.

* * *

Karin led Toshiro up the staircase to her classroom door, behind which she disappeared for her next class and he was left to head to eleventh-grade Physics on his own.

He was just about to turn into Urahara-sensei's classroom when a voice hailed him from down the corridor –

"Oi, Toshiro! Wait up!" … Ichigo.

Toshiro, glaring at Ichigo for using his given name and deciding to ignore the plea, missed the fact that he was not the only person who turned around at the sound of his name.

In fact, one Hinamori Momo had whipped around in sudden recognition so fast that her black hair fell partway out of its assembled knot at the back of her head.

_Hasegawa-kun!_

* * *

**A/N: **Weirdest thing about writing this story is that after all the organic and inorganic chemistry I've done, it's hard to try and imagine what tenth-graders learn.

Reviews are always appreciated. (:

All the best,  
gobet


	3. Indulge

**DEMURE  
**Chapter Three  
_Indulge_

* * *

_Toshiro sits, a homunculus of sorts, on the edge of a chair that shouldn't be upright in a room that doesn't exist in his brain that isn't awake._

_ He's looking up into the abyss of his psyche, all black, a little purple, like some brilliant cosmos display. He sees flashes, glimpses, flickering snapshots of what he believes to be memories. There are gaps, here and there, sometimes huge ones that are accompanied by the sound of a flat-lining heart, and sometimes itty-bitty ones, which are accompanied by a tiny spark._

_ Granny, when she was considerably younger and less frail-looking. They often took walks to the store to buy amanatto together. Down the road, though, he'd found himself going alone._

_ A girl, knocking on the door and greeting him and Granny's arrival to Junrinan. She gives them a box of treats, topped with a big red ribbon. Granny pats her on the head and sends her off with some watermelon. Toshiro's watermelon. Thanks a lot, Granny._

_ Bouncing one of the school's soccer balls off his knee in second grade, realizing his gift for it. "Hey, Granny … can I buy a soccer ball?"_

_ Another girl, with blacker hair than before, waving hello and asking if he'd like to engage in a match. A taller boy, much taller and brawnier than himself, joins in. He has orange hair, so stupidly orange that Toshiro doesn't feel so out of it with his white hair anymore. _

_ When he gets here – where the reminiscences of high school should begin – he gets some kind of negative feedback, with a screeching and a terrible ringing in his ears, a blur and cracking silver charges in the black. It-hurts-it-hurts-it-really-really-hurts—_

_ It's over, high school's over, and he hadn't seen a second of it. He's holding something now – something bony, lukewarm, that diverges into one – two – three – four – five branches. Oh, it's a hand – it's Karin's hand. The shinigami hadn't been lying. _

_ Toshiro stands up and walks closer to the edge, because this room has no walls, and he glares up at the images playing out like video clips all around him. He can touch them – they feel like liquid mercury, so cool and dark and toxic – and he pushes some of them out of the way, pushing them back, looking for those clouded high school years—_

_ And he watches. He forces himself to watch them, every single one, keeping the negative feedback away by holding the other memories back and apart, until they start corroding at his hands. _

_ From the depths of his imagination, the shinigami smirks and leans forward, mighty intrigued. _

* * *

Urahara-sensei's Physics class was no walk in the park, to say the least.

Toshiro was a brilliant student, and Ichigo was very capable as well (although his aura and personality might have pretended otherwise), so the pair of them worked well in cooperation assignments. However, Toshiro was not surprised to find that over half the class was already failing.

"Are you kidding? It's only September!" Ichigo observed, half-sniggering-half-incredulous as he blinked up at the list of updated grades posted on the class bulletin. "This is outrageous."

"The 93.1 is you, isn't it, Kurosaki?" Toshiro asked indifferently, turning back through the crowd of crestfallen students to return to his seat.

Grinning, Ichigo shouted, "_Oh _yeah." He, too, made to retreat to his seat, but took another over-the-shoulder glance at the list before saying, "The 99.4 is _you_, isn't it? Get out of here, _tenth-grader_. You don't even belong in this class. Go into the Advanced class or something."

_Then I'd have too much homework_, Toshiro thought. More homework meant less time to nap. Less nap time meant inhibited growth rates. Or so he believed.

"Yes, yes, check your grades, cry about it a little, but once you've seen it, get back to your seats. I said _independent study time_. If you make too much noise, I'll have to assign something else to shut you guys up, you know that, right?" Their blond teacher leaned back in his chair and yawned widely, tapping a dauntingly thick pile of worksheets on his desk with a lazy finger. From beneath the brim of his striped hat, he fixed the class with a meaningful, appraising look.

And so the entirety of the class was spent studying, quietly and individually, with nary a sound coming from the students' mouths save for that one girl in the smack-dab-center of the room who _couldn't _read in her head and took to whispering the words under her breath.

That got annoying quick. Soon, the complaints had piled to such an abundance that Urahara-sensei could no longer ignore her disturbance of the peace, and was forced to relocate her to the library under supervision of the librarian.

"What a nuisance. I really needed that time to study, too, and I couldn't concentrate because of her. I have two back-to-back hockey games tonight!"

"You'd think he'd move her _before _there was only fifteen minutes left, eh? Idiot sensei."

Pushing past the swarm of frustrated classmates, Ichigo muttered to Toshiro, "They think they had it rough; I was the one sitting _right in front of her_." He slowed his pace as the two of them neared the intersection at which they would part ways. "Every time I tried to focus on projectiles, all I could think about was multiplying vectors, because she _kept feeding that shit right into my ears_—"

"Whiny doesn't become you, Ichigo," smirked a short girl with black hair and a cynical stare.

"Wha – Rukia? I haven't seen you since the first day of school!"

"That's right, because we're not in any classes together, moron."

The early signs of oncoming bicker served as Toshiro's cue to leave. Turning the corner without even sparing a word of farewell to either one, Toshiro weaved his way through the hustling corridor and ducked into a small flight of stairs that was seemingly forgotten by everyone else after school.

He was halfway down the stairwell when a clear voice called out, "H-Hasegawa-kun! Wait!"

Toshiro paused and raised his eyes from his Physics overview booklet, where he saw a pair of girls' shoes a couple steps below. He found himself looking down on a vaguely familiar sight: that of a breathless girl with her black fringe blown over her forehead and slightly into her cheery brown eyes.

He blinked, looking side to side and then half-behind, and then said, somewhat agitatedly: "Are you talking to _me_?"

She smiled slightly, frowned quickly, and then murmured, "Yes…?" She seemed to be quite taken aback with his appearance as well, but before Toshiro could even think that she was thrown off by his white hair and blue-green eyes, she said, "Shiro-chan?"

Toshiro opened his mouth angrily, but then dropped his tensed shoulders, and couldn't think of anything to say. Long, long ago, there had a been a girl in the Junrinan neighbourhood who had stopped by to give some sweetmeats and amanatto when he and Granny had first moved in as a rule of hospitality. She had called him Shiro-chan, and he had snapped and sneered at her for it, and then he had never seen her again.

"Do I – do you –" Taking a deep breath and feeling rather frustrated with himself, Toshiro tried again: "Do we know each other?"

She smiled then, a very pretty one that was calm and quieting and seemed to come alive in her voice, "I think so."

And though it was the first reunion Toshiro had ever had with someone from his childhood, there was nothing very special about it, because he found there was nothing to mention, reminisce, or inquire about. The fact remained that he simply knew nothing about her to pretend to care.

So, ignoring the awkward silence as only a man of frozen attitude could, Toshiro continued stiffly, "What was it you wanted?"

It was then he noticed that she had been grasping some papers in her hand, and she lifted it then, offered it to him. He took them without a word, hearing her say, "Oh, well, one of them is mine, and one of them is yours –"

"—the name is Hitsugaya, not Hasegawa—"

"Sorry, I realize that, I'm very sorry…"

Chemistry notes, he recognized them as, and the sheet below was printed in the same handwriting as the sheet above, _her_ handwriting. He glimpsed the name written in the top right hand corner before he returned her copy – Hinamori Momo. It didn't exactly ring a bell in his mind or anything, but it didn't feel brand-new to him at the same time.

Toshiro tightened his grip on the paper and simply said, "You don't have to go to such trouble to help me, you know. I don't need it."

Still wearing that mild smile, she tilted her head in contemplative scrutiny and gently said, "Meanie. Kurotsuchi-sensei got angry because you were supposed to pick up these notes from him before yesterday, and you didn't. He wasn't planning on giving it to you at all, and he doesn't care if you don't know that Monday's test is going to be all on this theory material."

Lazy green eyes darted to the side. "Bastard," Toshiro grumbled.

Momo's initial reaction was a look of pure horror that he had insulted a teacher so, but almost immediately it converged to something like amazement and then a grimace similar to his – though hers was more complete, with a subtle pout and wrinkled brow. "He is a meanie, isn't he?"

Toshiro flickered his eyes back to her. "Wasn't I the meanie just a minute ago?"

Momo looked away from his partly-bored, partly-cynical expression, directing her gaze to the ceiling, and then giggled at her own blunder. "You're a nice meanie. And he's a mean meanie."

"Huh." Toshiro stared at the sheet of paper, at the neat words telling tales in an unfamiliar hand, and raised his eyebrows. "What a pain," he mumbled, skimming the contents of the notes. Lifting his eyes just a fraction above the top of the sheet, he snuck a glance at the girl, who was occupied with returning her own notes to her folder. "Thanks," he called as he passed her, limply raising the hand that held the notes in a goodbye wave of sorts, and began to plod down the stairs.

There was a pause in which he wondered if she had even caught his word of thanks, and deliberated repeating himself. But then—

"It was good seeing you again, Shiro-chan. Have a nice weekend!"

It took all of a minute for Toshiro to process that she had once again addressed him by that dreadful moniker. Enraged, and somewhat amazed, at her audacity, he halted and turned around so fast his neck made an unpleasant cracking noise:

"It's not _Shiro-chan_!"

Already at the top of the flight of stairs, she threw back over her shoulder, "If you can beat me on the next test, _then _I'll call you by your real name!"

And then she was gone.

* * *

Monday morning, Toshiro was late to early-morning practice.

"What's with you?" Renji snapped, half-asleep against the goalpost. "Making us wait an hour and a half…"

"To be precise, it was seventeen minutes," Izuru interjected.

"Yeah, you weren't at home this weekend, either," Ichigo complained. "What've you been up to this weekend?"

Toshiro swatted the questions away like flies and motioned for the others to follow him to the track field. "We're going to warm up with four laps around the field. I have some news from Matsumoto to pass on once you're all done."

Realizing their grievances would not be answered, Renji and Izuru joined the rest of the pack as they began running the 500-m loop. Ichigo, however, fell into step with Toshiro as the youngest soccer captain in Seireitei High history made a beeline for the shade of a nearby tree.

"Oi, answer me," Ichigo insisted. "Karin and I called at your place three times this weekend. No one answered. Where were you?"

"Why does it concern you?" Toshiro asked, disinterested. He sat down in the grass, leading Ichigo to follow suit, and began to organize the papers on his clipboard. "Damn Matsumoto … skipping out on her paperwork again …"

Ichigo ignored the last comment and said, "We wanted to play soccer with you this weekend. Karin's got a practice match coming up."

Toshiro gave a one-shouldered shrug and scowled, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's been a long weekend, Kurosaki. A family issue kept me at the hospital and I got a grand total of six hours of sleep. I advise you not to get on my bad side today."  
A particularly awkward silence seemed to melt into the atmosphere directly from Toshiro's frozen tone. Ichigo was treading on thin ice.

"Oh," he said simply, fiddling with his own hands for lack of anything else to fidget with. "Uh, sorry to hear that. Everything alright?"

Toshiro glared at Ichigo from his peripheral vision and, making it perfectly clear that nothing more would be discussed on the topic, said, "It will be."

Ichigo picked up one of the more brightly coloured papers from the binder Toshiro had brought. "Hey, this is the upcoming Sports Festival. I'm gonna wreck the show this year!"

Toshiro scoffed. "Only if you can win against me."

Slowly, the members of the SHSC had begun to approach, having completed their four laps – fairly or foully; either way, Toshiro had no business caring. He could already separate the men from the boys in this group he captained.

As they huddled around the shadowed tree beneath which Ichigo and Toshiro rested, Renji shoved his way to the front and shouted, "Come on, Hitsugaya, give us the news! Whaddaya got for us?"

Toshiro's glare – which hadn't fully thawed since he first shot it at Ichigo – was instantly directed toward the brawny loudmouth with the hair like blood. "Matsumoto and Urahara arranged a practice match for us. It's on Thursday, against Inuzuri High."

"Hey! That's in my district," Renji laughed, euphoric with anticipation for the upcoming match. "What a goddamn ghetto school that was. No way I'd ever be caught dead in one of their ugly uniforms."

Izuru frowned. "That's right … doesn't it take you an hour to commute to here from the South? You go to a lot of trouble to avoid that school, don't you?"

"Yeah, it _is _a lot of trouble," snarled Renji, "so _someone_ shouldn't make us wait." When Toshiro failed to rise up to the challenge, Renji grew bored of whining and pitched, "It'll be like taking candy from a baby, I swear. Those kids probably don't even know how to bounce a ball over there."

"We're not taking chances whatever," Toshiro said stonily. "This is, like I mentioned, just a practice match, but it's mainly to see each of your individual abilities on the field so we can organize all of you into first-string, second-string or third-string." Glancing at his watch, he added, "And we're out of time, so get to class. Oh, and Abarai? It's Hitsugaya-_buchou."_

As Toshiro dropped the binder and clipboard off at Urahara-sensei's office, something caught his eye on the basketball bulletin. It was a name, just a name, and for some inexplicable reason it'd seemed to have effortlessly snagged his attention and drawn him closer, right up to the sheet where _Hinamori Momo _was one of the only two freshmen selected for the second-string basketball team.

Raising an eyebrow, Toshiro shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away. _Huh_, he thought, _never would've guessed._

* * *

Thank the heavens that Momo was a Chemistry master. Otherwise, she never would have been able to survive Kurotsuchi-sensei's test without having studied even an ounce.

She would have blamed Aizen-sensei if she had the heart to. He had asked her to help him organize some files, and she was always happy to lend a hand with his Professor's paperwork – it made her feel like his assistant, or subordinate, or someone he counted on. And she had worked so very hard up until now to keep him at her side: preparing his meals, keeping their living spaces clean, taking out the trash – everything she could be bothered to do.

An inexplicable fear that the very moment she stopped being useful, he would get up and leave – she felt this sometimes. The understanding that as long as he considered her an asset, she could stay with him – she felt this all the time. And thus, Momo made it her ambition to gain and keep his appreciation.

This weekend had been busy – the university's semester had only just begun, and there were people dropping out of and coming into Aizen-sensei's classes, but more importantly, he was flooded with paperwork and assignments. It usually cooled down by mid-term, but how could Momo selfishly stress over this one measly Chemistry test when Aizen-sensei was absolutely swamped?

Nevertheless, she was pleased to say that there had been nothing she _couldn't _do on that test. She was confident she had gotten a good grade. On top of that, she had met the other members of her project group: one Madarame Ikkaku and Kiyone Kotetsu – a nitty-gritty soccer enthusiast down to the core, and a lovesick girl infatuated with Ukitake-sensei, the Japanese History instructor. The project details had been further clarified – the introductory abstract assignment was due before Wednesday, and during Wednesday's period, the entire class would embark on a trip down to Kurotsuchi-sensei's own personal research lab to further develop their projects.

The dismissal bell had just rang, and rather than searching the crowd of students that had poured out of doors on both sides of the corridor, she wanted to just get _home_ already. She had planned to bake a pretty treat for Aizen-sensei, which would wait for him on the table when he arrived back from the university – which would be _late _at night .

Momo pushed past the swarm of students with a feeling of slight impatience, and, with all the possible reactions Aizen-sensei might have to seeing her surprise in mind, she headed straight for the grocery store with an exhilaration building inside.

* * *

_Late_, Karin groaned, as she threw her dirty basketball uniform into a bag and tossed it over her shoulder. _Late, and this bag is heavier than ever_.

In a grumpy sort of mood, she began her trek home, Ichigo having agreed to join Ikkaku and Renji at the local fast-food joint for burgers when the girls' practice hadn't ended before dinnertime. (_What a moron_.) And to top it all off, their coach had been highly irritable this particular practice session.

Karin had even contemplated quitting the soccer club, but two primary reasons held her back from it – the first being that she loved soccer. Absolutely did. She knew full well that she was talented at it, too, and so why should a troublesome coach get her down about it?

The second was that soccer was also the only mutual interest – the only firm, passionate connection – she could be _sure _of between herself and Hitsugaya Toshiro.

… Enough said.

And though Karin hadn't thought it'd been that big a deal when Ichigo had met this new friend in August, and _hey he had white hair, too_, and he loved soccer, played it so well – well, all of that was just Ichigo's life. She really had no business or concern for it.

Until this happened. And she wasn't even sure when it happened, but now it was nigh impossible to be unconcerned, or pretend it wasn't her business, because somewhere between August and September Karin's opinion of him had been turned inside-out and now she not only thought him a very huge deal, but she also thought she might be really falling for him.

And the proof?

She was standing, at eight-thirty in the evening, at the corner of his house in Junrinan, which was quite a ways away from where she lived, staring at a locked door and dark windows, wondering where on earth he was when just two or three weeks ago, the only people she had ever cared to know the whereabouts of had been limited to members of her family.

Cheeks flushed from the moist and slightly cold air, Karin turned around and started for home.

* * *

One o'clock in the morning.

The sun had gone out, even the stars had gone out exceptionally early. Aizen Sosuke sighed and, as silent as nothingness itself, slipped in through his own back door. He had told Momo that he would be staying late at the university, but surely she'd never believe he'd been there until one in the morning. Perhaps he'd tell some story about joining a few coworkers at a bar afterward, or something.

Not that he indulged, of course. He rather couldn't stand liquor.

The point being that he hadn't stayed late doing work. Heck, no. What a naïve, foolish little girl. So gullible. So preciously innocent and forgiving. Those eyes, the big brown ones that seemed to shine whenever he smiled and lied right to her very face, were really the loveliest things he had ever seen.

In the middle of the kitchen table, there was a sort of hard cookie, about the size of his own head, shaped like a heart and topped with chocolate. In icing, Japanese characters drawn by Momo's neat hand read, _Thanks for the hard work! _

Aizen collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs and picked up the cookie in his hands, examining it with a smile. What attention to detail, he noticed. Intricate little webs of frosting all around the edges; the words themselves were very neat and careful. Terrific manual dexterity, too...

And all the force he had to apply for it to break was equal to the force needed to press a key on a piano. So terribly easy.

Devoured, it was, into a mouth that never stopped smiling the whole night through.

* * *

TBC

* * *

**A/N: ****Basketball – Momo's "fireball"  
****Chemistry – Kido (Hence Renji's poor performance in this class.)  
****I enjoy finding these AU-canon equivalents. **

I do read all reviews. Thanks for all the kind words. They often encourage me to further this story. (:

gobet


	4. Glass

**DEMURE  
**Chapter Four  
_Glass_

* * *

Momo's Tuesday started off with a smile.

She had earned a score of 105% on the Chemistry quiz. (Not only had she provided the correct answers for the final two questions, she had additionally provided possible alternatives, securing her an above-and-beyond total of 43/41.) Momo always hit it out of the ball park with Chemistry, absolutely _excelled _at it, even managing to top Hitsugaya Toshiro, Seireitei High's ingenuous prodigy who was currently upholding an overall average of 99.

Toshiro had earned (only) a score of 100% on the Chemistry quiz.

"You're really smart," Momo noted, glancing at his test from behind his shoulder.

"Not smart enough, it seems."

Momo only gave him a cheeky smile and walked back to her desk.

"Friend of yours, Hitsugaya?" asked Renji, coming up from behind him.

"Not really," said Toshiro, inserting the test into a specific section of his binder. "We used to live in the same neighbourhood. I think she came over to give my grandmother some food once, though."

"Oh," said Renji, not really caring at all. "Yeah, well, about this abstract thing—"

To add to Toshiro's misfortune, he'd been stuck with Abarai Renji and Inoue Orihime for group members. Though he wasn't insinuating they were _dumb _or _incompetent_ or anything of the sort – because, at the very least, neither had any learning disabilities as far as he knew – he had to admit that _any other two _people would make better prospects. Renji had a temper and was prone to pointless arguing; Orihime had a short attention span and was, in short, slow.

On the bright side, Orihime had a solid understanding of Chemistry and boasted a favourable mark (94), and on the less bright side, Renji was failing (37).

Toshiro sat then, in the corner at the back of the room in his usual seat, while Renji and Orihime crowded his desk trying to organize this project – and what dampened Toshiro's mood the most, probably, was that they were really trying, trying as hard as they could, and neither could agree upon a concrete idea.

"We would probably get a really great grade if we did something creative and original, like a video—"

"Well, it'd be fine if any of us could _make _videos, but – uh! We can't. _Obviously _a poster would be faster and easier to make—"

_This is ridiculous, _Toshiro grumbled, tuning out their debate and staring out the window. The sky looked as though it were about to rain – lately it had been wearing this expression all the time – and the grass was shadowed by clouds he couldn't see. Turning back to his fellow students, Toshiro smacked his palm on the desk and leaned forward.

"The two of you," he said in a low, intentionally menacing voice, "had better come up with some kind of agreement, because I am doing the research _and_ the report and I will not be bothered to have to do something about our presentation."

That shut them up well. It shut them up for the rest of class, which, Toshiro realized, was even worse progress than before.

* * *

Karin's Tuesday ended with a frown.

The day had been a moist one, with a pregnant cloud looming over the entire city, and right when the school day came to a close, it tore at the seams, bursting and unleashing a rainfall heavier than the town had ever experienced before. Soccer practice was held indoors, in the gymnasium, which Karin hated more than anything, because there was just _something _about playing in real grass and in real air and not in some wooden container of a room with stupid walls and boundaries.

"Good job," she said wearily to one of her teammates as the other girl ran for the water fountain. Worn out and hot under the skin, Karin was actually looking forward to being doused by cold rain the minute she set foot outside.

On the walk home, Karin found her thoughts wandering to her brother. Ichigo had quite a romantic dilemma himself – and hers was nothing compared to his – so she considered, for a moment, discussing her feelings with him.

But then she stopped, and almost laughed, and realized how _dense _she was being for even thinking of doing such a thing.

Once home, Karin didn't see Ichigo until after she had showered, changed into pyjamas, and set up her homework bundle on the kitchen table downstairs. Although it was nine o'clock in the evening, and only a half hour away from his usual bedtime, Ichigo came roaming for something to satiate his night hunger.

"Ichi, can you do my Math homework?"

"Hell, no. Too much Physics crap to do tonight."

Karin scowled at her brother as he dragged his feet across the kitchen, raking fingers through his tousled hair and scanning back and forth for snacks that could tempt him. "If you were _really _bent on doing Physics, you wouldn't be looking for something to eat."

Ichigo hungrily seized a brand-new bag of double-chocolate cookies on the countertop and began tearing it open. "Sweet!" he said under his breath. "Chocolate—"

"Oh, hey," Karin said suddenly, trying her absolute hardest to sound nonchalant, "did you ask Toshiro what I wanted you to?"

"Yeah. You were wrong; he doesn't hate you." Ichigo tossed scissors into the sink. They landed with a clatter, and were immediately doused in water. "I knew you were wrong to begin with; he's even sharper with me than he is with you. You're overthinking things."

Karin rolled her eyes and ignored his last remark. "… Anything else?"

Absently, Ichigo answered, "Uh … oh, I think there was something – he said you play well. That's a compliment Toshiro doesn't give to a lot of people, so you should be pleased." He then remembered Toshiro saying Karin played almost as well as Ichigo himself, but he decided to omit that for the sake of his own self-esteem. Perhaps neglecting it long enough would simply erase the fact that such a thing had ever been said about him.

Karin bit her lip and pretended to concentrate on her Math problems. "Oh, okay. Thanks."

Perking up, Ichigo half-turned around, a double-chocolate cookie clamped between his teeth and the successfully opened box tucked under his arm. With a lighthearted tone, he asked, "Why, do you fancy him or something?"

Karin was already almost gone, having just nearly left his sight. She disappeared in a hurry, but Ichigo found his answer in the slam of her bedroom door.

* * *

By some miracle, Toshiro had managed to hand in the group's abstract by the end of class – all done by himself, naturally, since Renji was sulking over being lectured and Orihime was too afraid of irritating Toshiro further.

Chemistry aside, the rest of his Tuesday passed by uneventfully, with a dreadfully _heavy _Physics lesson right at the end of it all. With a bag full of homework, Toshiro trudged home in a less-than-pleasant mood.

Toshiro was greeted by his grandmother when he got home from school that afternoon, who was shorter than himself, and much more jovial.

"Did you have a good day at school, Toshiro?" she questioned absent-mindedly, in the midst of slicing watermelon.

"It was fine, Granny." Toshiro didn't miss the way her bones were protruding more visibly, or the way she hobbled, sometimes having to lean on doorframes or just on the walls themselves. Her posture was crooked now, her shoulders a little more slumped in their perpetual hunch, and the lines around her mouth seemed even less elastic, her lips opening only to a certain point before she had to force out the rest of her words in a dry whisper.

It made him wince to see Granny suffering so, but there was nothing he could do until he graduated school and settled into an occupation that might be able to fund the medical attention she desperately needed. And yet, there lived a growing fear that always gripped Toshiro's windpipe like a set of claws when he wanted to say _something _about it all, a fear that stopped him from asking, a fear that sometimes was even so cruel to believe that Granny might not even make it to his graduation, let alone beyond that.

"Here you go, eat up," she croaked, sliding the plate of watermelon across the table. Toshiro promptly dropped his books and took a seat.

"A letter came from Hokutan today," said Granny, touching an opened envelope on the countertop. "Addressed to one Hitsugaya Toshiro. What could it be?"

Toshiro rolled his eyes. "What was it?"

"A scholarship to Zero Division."

His blue-green eyes widened a fraction, but he didn't say anything.

Slowly, Granny's words continued to come: "So many great offers from Zero Division, Toshiro … look, it's nice, isn't it?" She picked up the letter and began to turn it over in her hands, admiring with unseeing eyes.

Toshiro scoffed. "Seriously, Granny, I'd never pursue a career like _professional soccer_." He paused, and then looked up at her, a small smirk on his face. "You can't get rid of me that easily."

Though he doubted she could see his expression – she was probably the very embodiment of the phrase, _blind as a bat –_he definitely saw the smile she wore as she filed the envelope away into one of the kitchen drawers.

* * *

Momo noticed that Aizen had eaten her entire cookie. Though she never got the chance to see him – he often left for the university fairly early, around five or six o'clock, she was delighted to see he had left a little handwritten note pinned to the refrigerator, thanking her for the treat.

And so Momo hummed a happy tune as she packed her lunch in excess for the Chemistry class' day trip. She also brought lotion, Band-Aids, some loose cash, and even a spare change of clothes – you never knew what sort of incidents might happen in a lab.

Prepared and enthused, Momo set out especially early for school under a sky that looked no more inviting than it had on the previous days of the week.

She found that Toshiro had also arrived early, earlier than herself, and was already seated on the bench outside in the courtyard. Glancing around, she saw that Renji was also here, but he was on the other side of the courtyard, arguing with a girl even shorter than Toshiro who had black hair and an irritated expression.

Momo dropped her bag on the ground at Toshiro's feet and took a seat in the grass. "Why are you here so early, Shiro-chan?" she asked curiously, removing a bottle of lotion from the bag's contents and moisturizing her hands and wrists.

"I told you not to call me Shiro-chan," Toshiro said unhappily, refusing to look down at her. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on the school gate, watching for when anyone recognizable from their Chemistry class might arrive.

"Oh, there's no one here to hear it, anyway," Momo laughed. "So how long have you been waiting?"

Toshiro checked his wristwatch. "About twenty minutes. Kurotsuchi should be here soon, though." He inclined with a nod of the head to Renji in the distance. "We had to come early to compensate for the soccer practice we'll miss, and it takes a while to get here from my place."

"Are you still living in Junrinan with your grandmother?" Momo asked conversationally.

Toshiro turned a sharp eye down to her, but her attention was on pulling grass out of the dirt and scattering it slowly. "… Yes."

Nodding, she asked, "Do you like it there?"

While he understood that she was just trying to be nice, he would rather not talk about it. Instead of saying so, however, he responded with a harsh "None of the people there are really my friends."

Predictably, she fell quiet.

Though Toshiro felt a tiny twang of guilt, he also felt a subtle satisfaction at having said it. He knew it cut her somewhere under the skin; whether it was a deep or shallow cut, it was still a cut. Because this girl had probably had many other friends around the neighbourhood, a pleasant and upbeat girl like her, who wouldn't have been able to count on one hand the people she considered friends and who considered her a friend as well.

Toshiro remembered being young, wondering what was wrong with him, and he'd heard that adolescents experienced that insecurity and that it was common, but for a child to—? No, he'd been sure that there'd been something peculiar about him in particular, something to do, most likely, with his white hair and his blue-green eyes and the way he could only scowl, smirk or stare on a regular basis. He had seen that out-of-place fear of sorts, plastered all over the other children's faces, and even some of the adults would give him unsettled looks…

He wasn't aware quite how long he remained in a reminiscent daze of his mournfully lonely childhood, but when he came to, Momo seemed pretty bored at his ankles and several other classmates had joined them in the courtyard.

A few more minutes of silence saw the arrival of Nemu, Kurotsuchi-sensei's daughter and assistant, who immediately began herding the students onto the bus that was stationed at the far end of the road.

* * *

Toshiro glared out of the corner of his eye at Renji.

"Hold it still, Abarai," he said in a threatening tone. After a few seconds, Toshiro sighed with his eyes closed and said, "Hold it _still_!"

"You do it, then!" Renji shouted, trying to thrust the burette at Toshiro.

"Careful with that," scolded a passing Nemu, who chose to embellish her chide with a rap to Renji's head.

"Ow!" Indignant and frustrated, Renji tightened his grip on the burette and snapped, "I'll do the recording! You hold this stupid glass pipe, then, if you're so good at it."

"I'd like to, but I can't trust you with the recording," Toshiro scoffed. "Not only are you incapable of mentally converting litres to grams, you don't even know how to measure a meniscus."

From the look on Renji's face, Toshiro imagined he was probably correct on both counts, as well as the underlying accusation that Renji wouldn't know what a meniscus _was_.

Gripping the pen with determination, Toshiro narrowed his eyes and ordered Renji once more to hold still. With only pens borrowed from Kurotsuchi-sensei's research lab, each group was only given one sheet of instructions and observations to hand in, which, for Kurotsuchi-sensei, would mean _no mistakes, first try. _

"I'm back! I got our materials!" Orihime said, running up from behind the pair and jostling Renji to such a degree that he jerked and dropped the burette—

Toshiro practically threw the pen out of his hold in order to lunge forward across the counter for it with both hands, but he was only able to catch onto one end of the long burette, and it ended up snapping down the middle with the other half skittering across to the other end of the table.

Exhaling what felt like a forced sigh, Toshiro clenched his hands into fists and surveyed the damage. Solution was spilled in a thin trail going down to a fifth of the distance across the table from where the mouth of the burette was. Miniscule shattered fragments – thankfully not too many at all – glittered on the countertop.

Noticing that Orihime looked so frightened and apologetic that she was almost on the verge of tears, and Renji so braced for the lashing that was expected to come, Toshiro spoke before either could and said, "It's fine, I think I managed to get an accurate enough recording for that one. Let's just clean it up and move on."

Swallowing her nerves, Orihime nodded and squealed something about cleaning it up herself.

Toshiro excused himself as well, leaving Renji to reflect on his actions and hopefully safeguard the handout, and headed to find a sink to wash his hands.

There was slight blood from a cut on his knuckles, a visible shard of the burette lodged none-too-firmly inside. To add to his luck, none of the solution had gotten inside the open wound. Feeling somewhat relieved with the mildness of the injury he received, Toshiro snatched the glass right out of his skin without hesitation.

Now, if he wanted to get back to the experiment, he would have to find something to make sure his blood wouldn't be a compromising factor. Though it was unlikely, research labs – and especially Kurotsuchi's – likely wouldn't allow him to handle any chemicals with a fresh cut.

Telling the instructor was a bad idea, since the instructor in question was Kurotsuchi. His daughter Nemu might have been of sufficient help, but she had stayed behind at one of the rooms the class had passed; turned out she was the Vice-President of the Research and Development Institute, which made perfect sense considering the President was her father.

Toshiro was weighing his options with this one – whether he should make the trek all the way down to the main floor and ask around for a bandage of sorts – when he was interrupted by a familiar voice.

"Shiro-chan?"

Looking up, he realized that Momo was dead ahead, emerging from the ladies' room with pink hands that had clearly just been under the air-dryer.

"Oh, Hinamori," he said, somewhat hollowly.

"What happened to you?" Her wide eyes were fixed on his bleeding hand, a little concerned, a little curious, and more than a little repelled.

"Just a scratch from the burette, it's nothing—"

But she was already digging in her pocket, removing something – oh, it was a Band-Aid – and opening it already, but Toshiro interrupted:

"I said it's nothing, don't worry about—" He moved his hand to the left, tried to avoid the Band-Aid that was being offered to him.

"But you're bleeding—!"

"—I'm fine—!"

"You're not fine, you're—!"

"I don't need this—"

"I just want to help—"

"I don't need your help or your friendship!"

And with that, he'd managed to smack one of her knuckles away, causing her to drop the Band-Aid. It fluttered to the floor and stuck to the tile.

Oh yes, he knew what this was about. This was about earlier, when he'd said he hadn't had any friends in Junrinan, and she was probably feeling bad about it all, and reaching out to him, or whatever. But he wouldn't have any of it. She was, in fact, underestimating him. Not only had he done without friends for the majority of his life, he had done _well _without them. He prided himself on standing alone and standing against adversity.

Hearing her swallow in the extremely unpleasant silence that followed, Toshiro looked up, expecting to see tears or anger or even immense hurt written all over her face, but the only thing he could find in the lines of her mouth was a sad smile.

She tilted her head a little to the side, and it looked to him like a very difficult and painful thing for her to do, the neck movement so stiff and slow, still wearing that frown or smile or whatever it might've been. "Y-Yeah, sorry for being so annoying, Shiro – I mean, Hitsugaya-kun."

Toshiro's found that he couldn't make himself move. Staying utterly still, he wrinkled a brow and tried to think of something to say. His hand had stopped hurting, but his stomach felt like it was falling now. "Hinamori…"

"I understand," was all she said, with a nod that even seemed encouraging, and then she began to walk on by, even making sure to walk way to the right. "Do your best, Hitsugaya-kun."

Toshiro remained fixed in the spot for a few minutes more, and then he turned around in such a whirlwind that his shirt even made a whipping sound. He ran, then, not even fully sure what he was doing, down the corridor and almost to the end of it where she was still making her way back, only seeing the back of her head but thankfully it was still held high—

"Hinamori," he said, and his voice was deep and rough to begin with but right now it seemed especially low, and a lot coarser. "Sorry, could I borrow a Band-Aid?"

And later, Toshiro would tell himself he had done it because _without a Band-Aid he couldn't go back to the experiment _and that that was all, but the Toshiro who was acting in the moment was quite totally aware of the fact that he had held her back and asked for it on an impulse, and impulse that came from somewhere inside where all the pain and discomfort in his stomach had been. And almost miraculously, it was loosening up in there, his intestines unwinding, and he felt a lot lighter now, even though he was uncomfortable standing in front of her.

Momo didn't answer, but she did slip her hand inside her pocket once again and pulled out another Band-Aid, opened this one just like she had the first, and even closed the distance between them to put it on his hand herself.

She had her head down now, focusing on the Band-Aid, but he was certain he heard a smile in her voice when she said, "You're so weird, Shiro-chan."

At the end of it all, it turned out that Band-Aids wouldn't stay on knuckles very well. So to counter it, Momo was forced to plaster his knuckle with a total of four Band-Aids in a very odd-looking arrangement and thus forbid him to move the hand more than necessary.

Stepping back from Momo, Toshiro examined his hand and shrugged. It was his left hand, so it would be fine to do without for a couple days until the wound healed. In fact, Toshiro would probably just let it bleed out and then tear all the Band-Aids off the second it dried up. That would be much easier to deal with.

Even so, he still felt obligated to honour her with one of his rare smiles and, with his hand outstretched, even said, "Thanks, Hinamori."

She took it happily, and with a huge grin that outshone his smile by far, told him he was very welcome.

And although there were millions of things he had yet to know and discover about Momo Hinamori, Toshiro felt certain this was the beginning of a friendship the likes of which he had never before known.

* * *

**A/N: **Thanks for reading Chapter 4, folks!  
And many thanks for the lovely** burgunde**, of whom I requested this new story cover.  
Pink's not my favourite colour, obviously, but I do like the tone of it.  
(She's also a HitsuHina fan!)

I always enjoy reading reviews. Hope you enjoyed this instalment.  
All the best,  
gobet

**TBC**


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